


To Know Everything

by ShinFay



Category: Original Work
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Fantasy, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Character Injury, Major Original Character(s), Murder, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Original Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rebellion, Repressed Memories, Rivalry, Sibling Bonding, Tags May Change, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 23:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20591144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinFay/pseuds/ShinFay
Summary: Xin wants to know everything. Apparentally, that's illegal. Xin does not care. But it does make their life quest a whole lot more difficult. It especially does when they're drugged and tortured (honestly Xin has no idea, wouldnt be the first time though) and a rebellion ("reformation coalition") comes to take the injured Xin into their weirdass hospital. And not let Xin go. Problematic, because Xin is going to escape.





	To Know Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings at the bottom
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this as much as I've enjoyed writing this

The ceiling is cold. Just. Cold, far, far too cold. Hay bales and mud isn’t exactly the best insulator. But this cold is so unbearable, to the kings, just kill a few folks and use their bodies as insulators. That’d be better. Oh, I hope this gets over with soon. Why is the south so cold, I hate everything. I want to burn the tentative hut down but that’d be counter productive. Impulse control, remember. Impulse control. Doing everything via impulse doesn’t get your ambitions served to you, pleasantly glazed, on a platter. Still. I hate everything. I, of all people, have a right to hate everything.  
“Get out from the rafters.”  
Oh, the kings have got to be kidding me. She’s here, again. HERE. Of all the people in the world, they just...they just do stuff like this. They could’ve sent any other bounty hunter but no. It had to be Pàxiu. She doesn't even live in the South! Not even remotely! I slump against a support beam, staring at the poor excuse for a ceiling, announcing “I hate you.”  
“Acknowledged, get down.”Her voice wavers slightly as she nods. One of those annoying quirks you notice when you spend too much time around someone.  
“Seriously,I hate you so much.” I repeat, turning my head towards her direction, I have no idea what she’s thinking. Because she’s stupid.  
“Acknowledged, get down.” She repeats and the urge to kill her somehow miraculously gets bigger.  
I drop down, grabbing her collar and pull her up to her toes “I was doing just fine! Why did you have to interrupt? Why are you here?”  
Her face is blank,unafraid, as she says “You’re easy to find.”  
I throw her away from me, she stumbles, but regains her balance. I snarl “To you! Not everyone’s some royal telepathic freak.”  
“Do you want to go to jail again?” she warns, tilting her head slightly and I almost laugh.  
“I’ll escape.” I say, of course I will. I’ve done it before. What makes this time different?  
“Not this one.”She shakes her head lightly, and I get some sweet satisfaction of her perfect professional hairdo slightly coming undone.  
I bristle up, a vague feeling of hope of an actual answer fizzing in my chest. “How do you know?”  
“I do.” She pulls back up her hair back into perfect professionalism.  
I deflate, should’ve expected that. After all this time, I should've expected it. “I hate you.”  
“Acknowledged.” She blinks, finally, creepy whore. She opens her palms towards me as her misshapen little eyebrow raises as she asks “Are you going to cooperate?”  
“Hmm,”I slouch forwards, glaring straight through her beady glasses “,I dunno, what do you think.”  
A pause, she looks towards the floor and sighs in disappointment “No.”  
“Finally,” I smile, gently patting her head. “Glad, you finally understand.”  
She grabs my wrist, twisting it backwards in a threat of pain, and her voice crystalline. “Doesn’t mean I won’t succeed in capturing you.”  
Oh, you've got to be kidding me. I kick off her chest, twisting out of her grasp. Although staying to kick her ass is tempting, I'm self aware enough to know that doing that would not end well. I crash through the door, surprising the guard. As he raises his spear I toss money at him and run outside of the hut. Pàxiu may be able to find me, but she sure isn't going to catch me. Not again.   
I burst out into the snowy outdoors, the cold biting at my face. I hate the south, I hate this, I hate Pàxiu. I hate everything. Why is this always happening? My boots plunge into the snow, I hook a hand on a branch and climb through the sleeping tree. I leap onto another branch, stumbling briefly before regaining my balance. I repeat the process, leaping from overgrown tree to overgrown tree.   
Only after my limbs ache and burrs catch my sleeve do I stop and sit down on a branch. The needles brushing against what little is exposed of my face. I wipe my nose on the edge of my sleeve and rub my face with my glove to make sure my face hasn't fallen off yet. Okay. What to do now. I begin to pick off the burrs and stickers as I think. Okay. Probably should've came with a backup incase Pàxiu came back around, so much for not doing things on impulse. Really, you're a bit of a hypocrite.  
Spitfire time, what to do now. You could return to the poor excuse for a village, but considering a Scholar came around and had a skirmish with a scruffy kinda criminal. (Or anarchist, civil disobeyer, protestor, you've been called many things. But terrorists, you've been called a terrorist before. Which isn't really polite. You just want to know. What's the harm in wanting to know?) Since Pàxiu (whore), rudely interrupted your attempt to further your knowledge, the guy who you where gonna torture to get info out of is probably gone. Another option is to fallback, and although it makes my pride ache. It seems like the best decision. It's gonna take a while to fallback, but it's better than freezing to death. Anything is better than freezing to death.   
You know what, I still got money, I got loads of money. So I'll just take a hop skip and jump across several different trains and land back home. (I hope to the kings that nothing goes wrong.) Well, Bjara, I'm gonna coming in like a hurricane. 

A bell rings as I open the door, I frantically look around. Dammit she reorganised the furniture again. What's this jar thing? Wait, its a jar thing, that means I should put it down. Oops. Hopefully she doesn't notice. She'll most likely notice. So maybe if I just put it somewhere else, how recently did she reorganise? I can't tell. I'll just put it on the counter.  
Where is the couch? No couch. Why. Why does she insist on people standing. Wait. There's the gigantic dog bed (I think it got bigger while I was gone) and it's currently unoccupied. You know what that means? Mine. (Not bad, fuzzy and soft and so much better than trains. Bjara's treats her dogs like gods and frankly, I don't blame her.)  
The dog bed is comfy enough to fall asleep on.  
I wake up and immediately flinch out of some burning light hitting my face. I hiss as I hit the floor and my brain bolts awake. Skedaddling to my feet, my legs go jelly mode and I fall back onto the couch. I glare at Bjara, moving one of her magnifying glasses out of the sun. I hiss "What-" She tsks me into silence.  
Okay she moved me to the couch (which is not in the front room.) She walks towards me, her steps certain and graceful, just one foot in front of the other. It's when she does stuff like that makes me hate the fact that she's a dancer. She glares with the power of the sun behind her. She makes a vague gesture towards me. "Explain."  
I look at myself down and am struck by an oh moment. My collarbones are jutting through my shirt and my sunken stomach lays half exposed. I pull my head back towards Bjara and say "I got impatient."  
Bjara takes a deep breath and there is utter conflict in her body. I don't know what she's going to do, she may yell at me, but Bjarra's an efficient woman. If something doesn't work she stops doing it. She probably would've stopped caring about me but I wormed my way deep into her like a disease. I wonder if she's looking at getting a cure…  
Something slams against my chest leaving my sternum vibrating. I look down and it's a...calorie bar. I glanced back up at her and she glares back. She chucked a snack bar at me. Where she got it I don't know, but she chucked it and it hurt. Doesn't exactly help that you can count my bones at the moment. My stomach is close to eating my skeleton at the moment so I'm gonna hope she didn't drug it. The taste is incredibly bland and I recognise it as a calorie bar. I know I wont get anywhere without eating it, but hey it's chock full of calories and I have a woman currently thrice my weight death glaring me so I better eat it.  
She sighs "Explain."  
Ah, there it is. I swallow but I didn't chew it thoroughly so I had to choke down a lump of whatever the calorie bar is made out of. I crane my neck back to look her in the eye (there's still a weird lump in my throat) as I explain "It took three days to get back from the South. I traveled across over fifteen hundred miles to get back to the holy land, food would have slowed me down."  
"You dropped your food bag." It's the statement sorta question Bjarra tends to say.  
"Yeah."  
She quirks an eyebrow "On purpose?"   
"Yeah."  
She closes her eyes and takes a deep, exasperated sigh. She tiredly rubs her eyes"You can walk?"  
"Yeah."  
"Get up." She makes a slight gesture and I immediately hop up to my feet.   
It's… probably not a good sign that my legs are shaking under the strain. But Bjara's already walking out of the room and I'll be damned if I fall back onto the couch. I walk and the realisation finally hits that I am basically a walking skeleton. Maybe I should get a chat with The Lord of Whores. I follow Bjara to her kitchen, thankfully she gestures towards a chair allowing me to sit. She begins rummaging around the kitchen "Continue eating the calorie bar."   
I continue eating the calorie bar trying my best not to make a face. I don't like it, but I guess there's not much of a choice. The clack of nails against the floor alert me to Tlay. He puts his white furrows muzzle on my thigh and looks up at me with his soulful eye. (A one eyed god, Bjara once told me, he gave his first eye to live, and his third eye for a friend. She's not worried that his remaining eye is going blind.) I scratch behind his ears, and Tlay smiles. I look up, at Bjara's back and ask "Where's the others?"  
"They are around."  
"Are Hura's puppies okay?" Last time I saw her, she was basically a hormonal circle.  
Bjara pauses, her hands lowering. "One died, it just couldn't find the will to breathe. The other three are doing just fine though. They are all at my sister's."  
"She becoming a crazy dog lady to?" I support all crazy dog ladies in this world and the next.  
"Maybe." There's a hint of amusement in her voice and my heart shakes a little.  
Tlay makes a small bark, just a small, hey I'm still here. I rub down his neck (Tlay is just hooves away from being a small horse), he's so polite. Yrvir just bites you to remind you that she's still there. (Toothy bastard.) Maybe it's the age difference. Or maybe it's the size difference. Where Tlay is a horse, Yrvir's just a rat. A very very loud rat. (Bjara's given up on training her. I think it may be because of Yrvir's last owner.)  
Speaking of, Bjara finally found what she was looking for (a notepad, why does she have a notepad in the kitchen) and she vaguely turns around to face me. "Report."  
"Pàxiu found me, again. I don't even know why the Scholars sent her, she doesn't even live in the south, not even remotely. Maybe she's stalking me. I think she's stalking me. She's definitely stalking me. And of course due to Pàxiu being there she ruined the entire plan and I didnt get any info and believe me I am this close to being homicidal over this its just so stupid-""Breathe." Bjara idly reminds me.  
I take a deep breath and some part of me thinks I'm annoying Bjara with me talking so much. I dismiss it and continue "So after throwing some money at the guard, I hijacked a train, didn't eat for three days, may or may not have drunkenly fought a few folks. Can't remember. Which is ironic isn't it, I want to know everything yet I can't remember anything while I'm drunk. And I remember everything. Eidetic memory and all that."  
"Xin."  
"Yeah?"  
She glances at the notepad "This is the twenty sixth time you've gone chaotic and didn't take care of yourself. "  
Oh. I didn't realise that. I shrug "Oops."  
She sets the notepad down and looks at me straight in the eye (her makeup is flawless.) "Any more times like this and I'll need to contact Cira."  
I hop up smiling,then immediately sit down because my bones were not prepared for that "I know, I know. But please do. Contact him I mean. I'd love to see the bastard."  
Tlay whines and I go back to petting him. Bjara blinks "You do realize that your brother is extremely busy?"  
"Yeah yeah yeah. But the fool has a heart. You know the time where I didnt eat for a week and we're both like eighty something percent sure I got hypothermia or something? How about you put that back on the record."  
Bjara blinks, but writes it down. I don't think she understands why I want to see him again. She should, she has a sister. Sibling bond and all that. Maybe she thinks I hate him? I could never hate the bastard. "When do you think I'll get to see him?"  
Bjara shrugs "I dunno."  
My heart soars, she dropped her formality (a rarity.) A glass clinks in front of me, most likely alcoholic. A colorful little straw hanging onto the edge. I look up at Bjara and she smiles. (Beautiful.) I blink uselessly for a few seconds before slurping it down. (It's sweet and bubbly down my throat.) Its finished within a minute, and I scratch Tlay's graying chin. I hold my cup out "Another?"  
She complies. It tastes just as sweet and I down it just as fast. Never really classified as a lightweight. And Bjara has never been classified as a bad bartender. Behind her own personal little bar, she's swift as the wind and I watch her idly. Her formless dress shifting dramatically with her movements and even now you can still tell that she's a dancer. Whenever she is standing, her heels go behind each other. She reaches with her entire body and she never stumbles when she's on her toes.   
I lean on my hand, probably smiling like an idiot. "I think you are very very beautiful. Enough to bruise bone with a single calorie bar."  
I burst into giggling and snorting. My side begins to stitch and the stool begins to tilt but I'm fine, its not that far. Tlay wines as he paws my thigh. I clip my stool back onto its legs and rub his head and neck, cooing "I'm fine, Mr.Horse. I just happen to sound like a pig when I find something hilarious."  
I look back at Bjara. Her headdress is pulled back, showing off her black hair, gently curling around her face and that smile. It kills me every time. I take a swig of alcohol only to find the cup empty, sans the ice.  
She gives me another drink.  
How it devolved into a one sided alcoholic drinking party, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why she's giving me alcohol. She's normally so cold. Why is she suddenly acting like a friend? What alcohol is she giving me? It tastes candy sweet so it has to be mixed. I lean back, I'm on the couch, when did I get on the couch? I look towards Bjara "Whhhh-what alcohol areya givin meh?"   
"It's nothing." Her voice is ringing.  
Euphonic, I think that's a word;it means a sound that's beautiful. Her voice is euphonic. "It's somethin, iiiit's somethin. Multiple somethins."  
I take a swig of the drink. Something is wrong. A fight or flight instinct, something is there. Something is wrong. I stare down into the cup, she rubs her hand across my shoulders as she rolls herself next to me. Where-where did her dress go. Her culture is all about chastity why is shr-why is she so close to me. She rubs my back, right down my vertebrae. Its suppose to be comforting, I think. It's not.  
Vomit pulses through my throat. The toilet water splatters on the sides. I hold my stomach as I slide onto the bathroom tile. It's filthy. When did I get in the bathroom. When did I get this bad. Is this alcohol poisoning? This is wrong. Something is wrong. This isn't just alcohol. This isn't like being drunk. Something is wrong.  
She drugged me.   
Bjara drugged me.

What is she going to do to me.

I'm in a bed. Its soft, velvet. A noble's bed. The air bites at my skin, where are my clothes, what did she do to me, what did she do to me? My cheeks ache and my throat feels scorched with stomach acid. There's sound. Just a jumble of sound, I can only make vague sense of. My lungs forget to breathe when I hear Cira. Oh, the bastard, he's always been ahead of me. He's gonna fix this up just like any other time I get myself injured or nearly decapitated or something. Wait. Is that my voice?  
I can't breathe.

It smells like vomit and blood. I shouldn't gloss over that smell despite my brain trying to push forward. Why does it smell like blood? Where am I? Not the bed. Not the bed. At the very least I know I'm not in the bed. Thank the kings I'm not in the bed. Okay. Body check. Start from the toes, work your way up.   
My thigh has a deep pressure in it. I don't know why but I'll get to it later. (I don't know what is happening. And it hurts. It hurts not knowing.) Work my way up, my pelvis feels bruised. (Where are my clothes?) Stomach is sunken, still haven't eaten enough to get back to normal weight. There's a pressure below my (left?) Right shoulder. The pressure lines up to my neck.   
Am I restrained? I don't think there's anything around my limbs. But as I think of my arm moving, I both feel it and I don't. My arm feels foggy and there's the slight distinction of this arm not being real. There's a name for this, there's a name for this feeling. What is the name?

My name is Xin from the Eastern provinces. My biological mother and father never cared for me and don't know that I am their offspring. I don't have a last name. Legally, I don't exist. I want to know everything. Including the scholar's secrets. My name is Xin. My name is Xin. I'm lactose intolerant and don't care about it. I like dogs. I can climb trees very well, usually. I am metaphorically above the ground, at all times. I don't take care of myself. My brother-  
Pàxiu doesn't need to know anything about my brother. The scholars don't need to know anything about my brother. What they do need to know is that they need to get out of my damn head!  
Shattered glass and I am looking down at Pàxiu (the whore herself.) Her glasses gone and her eyes unnaturally wide. I think she's afraid. Maybe it's because I recognised her invading my mind. Maybe it's because of my hands around her neck. I'm going to treasure the look on her face for a long, long time.

My name is Xin from the Eastern provinces and I am stuck. Literally restrained. What in the name of the kings? This can't be ethical. I'd make a complaint to the United Royalty but hey I'm a criminal who keeps stabbing a thorn in all of the Scholar's sides so hey maybe this is ethical from a legal standpoint (the government is deeply flawed.) Well if the telepathic Scholars are going to continue to invade my mind I'm going to make them live through every second of my sex life.  
That's...that's pain I think.   
Are, are the telepaths trying to give me a headache? What?  
Hello, that looks like my brother in the chaotic color splash of my brain. Chances are of him being fake. Solid ninety eight. There's enough shapeshifters in the scholars who knows maybe they combined forces with the telepathic whores to do crisp like this. Either it's bro in real life and he's here to help (how he got into your psyche is unknown but he'd probably do something like that), scholarly induced hallucination, or my brain just going nutty. Safest option for all three is just back away from him slowly, making up curses on the spot.

**Author's Note:**

> Nonconsensual drug use, Torture mention


End file.
